Jean-Pierre Serre Ebin Joseph November 3Rd, 2014

Jean-Pierre Serre Ebin Joseph November 3rd, 2014

Jean-Pierre Serre was born on September 15th, 1926 in Bages, France. In school, he was placed in higher level courses due to his precociousness. How- ever, he was often bullied by the older children because he was an easy vic- tim. In order to pacify the oppressors, he finished their math homework for them. This was when he developed his deep passion for mathematics. His first peek into the world of higher mathematics came when he studied his mother’s calculus book at the tender age of 15. He was one of the more gifted students throughout his academic career. By the end of World War II, Serre attended the Ecole Normale Superieure until 1948. That same year he was accepted into the Sorbonne where he received his PhD in Mathe- matics. After his graduation from the Ecole Normale Superieure, he worked with Henri Cartan on research regarding Algebraic Topology. Serre was first introduced to the topic when he read a paper of fiber spaces and spectral sequences by fellow French Mathematician, Jean Leray. This advancement paved the way for Serre to write his paper and collaborate with Leray and Cartan to propose new progress on the relatively new field of Algebraic Topology. For his work in the aforementioned topic, he received the Field’s Medal in 1954, the youngest ever to accomplish such a feat.

Ever since, Serre has moved on to other topics including Number Theory, Group Theory and Galois representations. It was his firm belief that there are unifying themes in Mathematics and the field is not as disparate as it seems. In fact, he created a subset of Math called Arithmetic Geometry where he applied Algebraic Geometry to Number Theory. He was a member of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris until 1954 and procured a teaching position at the University of Nancy for two years. Then he returned to Paris for a professorship at the College de France where he worked until his retirement in 1994.

His position at the College de France allowed him plenty of time to pursue research ideas and he made occasional visits to Harvard University and the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. His contributions to Mathematics garnered him many more awards such as: the Balzan Prize (1985), the Steele Prize (1995), the Wolf prize in Mathematics (2000) and most notably, the Abel Prize (2003). He was the ﬁrst recipient of the Abel Prize and also

1 accepted numerous awards from his own country like the Grand Cross of the Legion of Merit and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. He is also a member of various scientiﬁc institutes around the world in countries like Russia, Sweden, Norway, France, the United States and the Royal Society in Britain. In 2012, he became a member of the American Mathematical Society. He earned Honorary degrees from Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard and won the Gold Medal of the French National Scientiﬁc Research Center. He was a part of the second generation of members in the Nicolas Bourbaki group. He made advancements in Galois theory and Fermat’s last theorem. He also has 20 mathematical topics named after him which spanned and crossed many of the areas of math he was interested in as mentioned above. As of now, he is enjoying his retirement in Southern France.

References

[1] ”An Interview with Jean-Pierre Serre.” Interview by C. T. Chong and Y. K. Leong. Sms.math.nus.edu. Sms.math, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.

[2] ”Interview with Jean-Pierre Serre.” Interview by Martin Raussen and Christian Skau. Ams.org. American Mathematical Society, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.

[3] O’Connor, J. J., and E. F. Robertson. ”Jean-Pierre Serre.” Serre Biog- raphy. MacTutor, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.

[4] The Editors of Encyclopdia Britannica. ”Jean-Pierre Serre (French Mathematician).” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Bri- tannica, n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.